Ron Kubati was born in Tirana in 1971 and emigrated to Italy in 1991. He holds two Ph.D.s: one in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy from the Università degli studi di Bari, and one in Italian Studies from the University of Chicago. He has published a collection of poems in Albanian, Midis shpreses dhe endrres (1992); as well as four novels in Italian: Va e non torna [Leaving with no Return] (2000), M (2002), Il buio del mare [The Darkness of the Sea] (2007), and the just-published La vita dell’eroe [The Life of the Hero].